PORT TOWNSEND — After a nine-month break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trinity United Methodist’s Candlelight Concerts will return in an online format with the “Classical/ Neo-Classical Finger-Style” guitarist Joe Euro at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Euro will appear at the Candlelight Concert Online series at Trinity United Methodist Church in Port Townsend for one set with no intermission. To listen to his performance, go to https://trinityumcpt.org, where a link for the Candlelight Concerts Online and ways to donate can be found.
Euro is a Port Townsend entrepreneur who founded one of the state’s oldest wine/bottle shops, the Wine Seller, in 1982. He also is a classical guitarist who has played numerous live shows and events such as Port Townsend’s and Seattle’s Wooden Boat festivals.
Since this concert will be live-streamed, Euro is looking forward to a potentially much larger audience than the usual 80 to 120 folks who can fit in the old church at 609 Taylor St. But he said he will “miss the live interaction and applause … oh well … I often play my heart strings out, even if it’s only me.”
The Candlelight Concert performance will include acoustic, instrumental neo-classical-finger style guitar, featuring many of Euro’s original neo-classical compositions, some actual classical guitar, some light jazz and a bit of his “ambient space guitar” pieces.
Euro’s recordings have been played and appreciated around the world, and his music is available through a number of sources such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Rhapsody, Napster and Pandora.
“Euro’s performance is always intriguing with a fair amount of variety and perhaps a glimmer of virtuosity,” organizers said.
His selections are generally played on at least three or four different guitars, which all sound and look different.
Most are classical/Spanish nylon string guitars, but Euro usually brings “Big Red,” his jumbo bodied steel string with cutaway.
Euro also utilizes a fair amount of guitar “tricks” that allow him to play two parts of a piece at once with the use of various “iconoclassical” techniques with “reach overs,” “slap-ons,” “hammer-ons,” “pull-offs.”
Euro will perform some original pieces, such as one he’s titled “The High Road” (the title track to his first CD, a lively Scottish dance-like piece) as well as “Eyes On The Horizon,” “Souvenir,” “Holiday Cheer” and “Through the Years.”
Euro chooses not to be tied to playing a particular stated set list, but he generally chooses to cover, besides his own compositions, a few straight classical pieces “plucked from my classical guitar repertoire,” he said — perhaps some Scarlatti, Satie, Sor and maybe Paganini.
Perhaps he will play and improv on a Chopin Prelude, if there’s time.
Euro has taken to playing some arrangements he’s made of other popular tunes such as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Euro will no doubt perform some of his “Big Spacey Sounds,” as he calls them, ambient pieces such as “Alone Among Angels,” from his “Souvenir” CD, and he sometimes does a medley of two works, “Then They Were Gone” and “Midnight Watch” from his “Eyes on the Horizon” and “The High Road” recordings.
